A certain small set of powerful, conservative white men in Britain just can’t seem to keep quiet when it comes to weighing in on what Muslim women in Europe should and should not be allowed to wear in public.

But it’s mostly intended to ban the face coverings that some Muslim women wear — specifically the burqa, which completely covers the face and body, leaving a mesh panel to see through, and the niqab, the face veil that covers the lower half of the face but leaves the eyes visible.

Christina Animashaun, Vox

Conservative MP Boris Johnson, Britain’s former foreign secretary, just couldn’t resist opining on the development in Denmark.

In a column in the UK’s Daily Telegraph newspaper on Sunday, Johnson wrote that while he doesn’t support a burqa ban, he does think they’re “ridiculous” because they make women look like “letter boxes” and “bank robbers.”

“If you say that it is weird and bullying to expect women to cover their faces, then I totally agree,” Johnson wrote. “I would go further and say that it is absolutely ridiculous that people should choose to go around looking like letter boxes.”

He also said that if “a female student turned up at school or at a university lecture looking like a bank robber,” he would ask her to remove her face covering in order to speak to him. He added that humans “must be able to see each other’s faces.”

Almost immediately, deaf people began responding to Martin’s tweet, slamming him for using their disability to defend bigotry and Islamophobia:

As a deaf person I kindly ask you not to speak for me. I do not find it disrespectful and encourage those to wear and be able to wear whatever they want and choose. It’s their face and their right to cover it!

@iainmartin1 don’t use your xenophobia and disrespect to speak on behalf of the Deaf. I’m with @geordieprincess here, you don’t speak for us. If they to wear a burka, they should be absolutely free to. I’d rather talk to someone in a burka than someone who is offended by one.

Deaf here. You don’t speak for me. I agree that seeing faces is helpful, but not at the expense of our Muslim sisters faith. If this was really about us, all hearings would learn to sign. Kindly, don’t rope us in to your islamophobia, we want not part in it.

So what gives? If there aren’t hordes of veiled Muslim women clogging the streets of London or Paris, why all the fuss?

The answer, at least in part, has to do with the rise of nationalism and populism in Europe.

“Underpinning these debates is the degree to which attitudes toward Islam have become conflated with populist and nationalist concerns about preserving ‘European’ — read: Christian — identity,” Vox’s Tara Isabella Burton wrote in June.

“Recent Pew polls have found that, increasingly, Christian identity in Western Europe has strong nationalist echoes,” she continued. “Churchgoing Christians in most Western European countries tend to have more extreme anti-Islamic and anti-immigrant sentiments than their non-practicing or non-religiously affiliated counterparts.”

When Johnson and Martin and their ilk make deliberate public statements specifically singling out two items of clothing worn by a tiny minority of Muslim women and calling them ridiculous and disrespectful, it’s not about fashion, or disability advocacy, or any other excuse. It’s about preserving the “purity” of white Christian identity in Europe.

Since they’re apparently incapable of keeping their mouths shut about these issues, they could at least do everyone the courtesy of saying what they actually mean.

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